The AI Industry Must Stop Doom Trolling w/ Cal Newport

Summary

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Better Offline – "The AI Industry Must Stop Doom Trolling" w/ Cal Newport

Date: June 19, 2026
Host: Ed Zitron (Cool Zone Media)
Guest: Cal Newport, Computer Science Professor and Author

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Episode Overview

This episode of Better Offline centers on the phenomenon of "doom trolling" in the AI industry, a term popularized by guest Cal Newport. Doom trolling is the practice of AI companies spreading anxiety and fear about the catastrophic potential of their own products—often in official white papers and media appearances—while continuing to profit from those products. Host Ed Zitron and Newport unpack the motivations behind this industry behavior, its moral implications, and the ways in which both media and the public have been swept up in what Newport calls a "quasi-religious" mythmaking around AI. They argue for a more grounded, product-focused discourse and ridicule the current climate of doom-laden speculation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Is "Doom Trolling"?

• Definition: AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind) repeatedly publish alarming narratives about AI’s potential for societal and existential harm, while never pausing or even changing their business practices.
  • Cal Newport (04:03):

    "[The AI industry] regularly tries to terrify their consumers about the harms that their products are going to cause. If this was any other industry, this would be completely mind-boggling."

• Analogy: Newport compares it to Ford warning the public their trucks might "catch on fire and burn people to death," but then continuing to manufacture them anyway.

2. The Moral Dilemma of Doom Trolling

• Newport proposes two possible motives for AI executives:
  1. Belief in Actual Doom: If the threats are real, they have an ethical obligation to stop—not simply warn.
  2. Cynicism for Profit: If not, then sowing mass anxiety is simply immoral profiteering.
  • Cal Newport (06:02):

    "There is no moral analysis that says trying to frequently terrify people about the things you're building while making no adjustments to the things you're building... makes sense."

• Ed Zitron (14:27):

  "I just think that they correctly realize that they could very easily make people talk about something that doesn't exist just by mentioning it."

3. Recursive Self-Improvement (RSI) & Philosophical Roots

• Doom trolling leverages the theoretical concept of RSI—AI that improves and builds itself—to amplify dread and speculation.
  • Newport traces this back to 1960s academic thought experiments and how they morphed into a "cultish" philosophical movement, influencing the likes of OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei.
  • Cal Newport (12:10):

    "These, the two major players we have in AI right now, come out of philosophical superintelligence, which uses this idea of RSI. It's a parable, an abstraction—not like a serious technical concern."

• The hosts argue that much of the public anxiety is the result of industry figures and journalists taking these nontechnical, speculative fears at face value.

4. Deconstructing the Personal and Social Dynamics

• Pride and Identity: Many AI boosters and adjacent tech figures defend the narrative out of personal investment and embarrassment at being wrong (24:31).
• Quasi-Religion: AI hype mimics religious fervor, with capitalism serving as the “God.”
  • Ed Zitron (25:21):

    "This is religious cultism. But the God is capital."

• Media Complicity: The media bears significant blame for amplifying doomsday narratives without scrutiny (58:17).

5. The Bubble Mentality & Economic Realities

• The rhetoric distracts from the fact that AI, in many current forms, is a normal (even underwhelming) technology, not a world-ending force.
  • Ed Zitron (33:17):

    "When you read any story about AI that's positive, it always speaks in the future tense... When they do speak about what's happening now, it's the vaguest stuff in the world."

• Diminishing Returns: Recent AI advancements come from minor, labor-intensive improvements rather than fundamental breakthroughs (51:59).
  • Post-2024, innovation in AI comes from tweaks around language models, not increased core capability.
• Venture Capital & Hype: VC funds fuel and depend on discovering new markets for "unicorns," pressuring the AI industry to oversell its products and promise impossible futures (58:34).
  • Cal Newport (60:32):

    "We're talking about one street in one city... Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto. The people on that one street need to find a new territory that can produce $100 billion companies."

6. Why Ridicule, Not Panic, Is the Right Approach

• Newport argues for embarrassment and ridicule, rather than counter-hype doom, as the rational response to industry fearmongering (28:07).
  • Cal Newport (29:00):

    "If you read these things... It's not philosophy, it's not technology. It's just goofy. I think embarrassment is key."

7. How to Shift the Conversation

• Treat AI like any other consumer product: Assess what’s actually being sold, its benefits, whether it’s worth the money, and abandon mystical narratives.
  • Ed Zitron (34:57):

    "These weirdos are trying to make you scared of cloud software."

  • Cal Newport (65:14):

    "This whole conversation is about, stop treating this like a demon that's been summoned. Make fun of doom trolling... And just treat this like a normal product."

• Explicit call to engineers and skeptics: Stop matching industry “intensity” with doom—redirect with derision and clear-eyed critique.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the absurdity of doom-slinging for profit:
  • Cal Newport [04:09]: "If this was any other industry, this would be completely mind-boggling."
• On ethical obligations:
  • Cal Newport [06:02]: "There is no moral analysis that says trying to frequently terrify people about the things you're building... makes sense."
• On pride and embarrassment driving AI discourse:
  • Ed Zitron [24:31]: "It's the pride thing... But you're right, the way that they react... the pretzels they're contorting themselves into..."
• On the religious tone of the AI industry:
  • Ed Zitron [25:21]: "This is religious cultism. But the God is capital."
  • Cal Newport [26:38]: "They would mock 'intelligent design' arguments, but they're like 'Hey, we can draw a unicorn in ticks using GPT-4, the AI God is coming.'"
• On the endpoint of current AI tech:
  • Ed Zitron [67:46]: "In the end it is normal technology… you wouldn't freak out about kubernetes, Microsoft Word autocomplete shouldn't scare you."
• On the need to shift the conversation:
  • Cal Newport [65:14]: "Make fun of doom trolling, because that's kind of embarrassing."
• On psychological harm:
  • Cal Newport [55:05]: "The net harm that doom trolling... has caused in terms of mental health far, far, far, far exceeds any... benefits that this AI technology has produced so far."

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Important Timestamps

• [04:03] – Cal Newport explains the strangeness of AI company "doom trolling."
• [06:02] – Breaks down the two possible (and both problematic) motives behind existential AI alarmism.
• [09:43] – Recursive self-improvement explained; why it's a lazy fallback for technical vision.
• [12:10] – The origin of philosophical doom narratives in AI.
• [24:31] – How pride, embarrassment, and internet culture uphold the hype.
• [29:00] – Newport calls for ridicule and embarrassment over panic.
• [33:17] – The media and AI companies stay vague about real, current product capabilities.
• [51:59] – Discussion of diminishing returns and the current state of AI research.
• [55:05] – The measurable, negative mental health impacts of mass doom messaging.
• [58:17] – Media and venture capital’s role in hyping and legitimating AI fears.
• [60:32] – The role of Silicon Valley VC in seeking new markets post-crypto bust.
• [65:14] – Newport summarizes: “Stop treating this like a demon that's been summoned... treat this like a normal product.”

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Summary: Takeaways for Listeners

• Doom Trolling is a manipulative PR strategy, not a moral warning.
• The supposed existential risks of AI serve Silicon Valley’s economic interests: fueling hype, attracting investments, and deflecting from the mundane reality of today’s AI products.
• The real harm isn't runaway AI, but widespread anxiety created by industry and media narratives.
• The antidote isn’t counter-hype or panic, but critical thinking, demand for real product accountability, and, above all, ridicule of ungrounded grandstanding.
• Listeners should treat AI with curiosity and skepticism, resist the urge to join “camps,” and keep the conversation product- and outcome-focused.

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Final Words

Cal Newport [65:14]:
"Stop treating this like a demon that's been summoned. Make fun of doom trolling, because that's kind of embarrassing. ... Just treat this like a normal product."

Ed Zitron [67:46]:
"The actual technology itself is not scaring you. It's the people around it and the people's extrapolations."

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For further discussion and resources:

• Subscribe to Ed Zitron’s newsletter
• Check out Cal Newport’s New York Times op-ed on doom trolling
• Join the Better Offline Discord and subreddit

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Transcript

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[Ed Zitron]

Callzone Media hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm of course your host, Ed Zitron. Better Offline that' I'm back all of you. And to be clear, when I said I was having wisdom teeth surgery, I meant I was having more of them added to make me more powerful. The operation was a success. I apologize also for Doing this week in reverse with the longer episode on the Friday and the monologue on the. Well, I guess Tuesday, I guess I had to put out OpenAI's financials at the last minute and, well, here we are. Subscribe to the newsletter. Ideally the premium to support your local Zitron. And as ever, if you have anyone else's financials, you can catch me on ezron 76 on signal. It's going to be in the episode notes. Anyway, today, now that I'm done drinking milkshakes, I'm joined by the wonderful computer science professor and writer Cal Newport to talk about AI, but specifically to talk about what he calls doom trolling. In one of the best pieces I have read on AI ever. Cal.

[Cal Newport]

Well, first of all, I'm disappointed. I've sent you my financials multiple times in your Signal chat and yet you have not written 10,000 words about them yet. So I don't know what you're doing here.

[Ed Zitron]

You haven't lost $11 billion or anything. You need to get those numbers down. No, I only write about bad companies.

[Cal Newport]

I wrote it off though, Ed. It's okay.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, you moved it to an SPV.

[Cal Newport]

That's right. I may have spent $11 billion, but really I was profitable. It's just a matter of time.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, exactly.

[Cal Newport]

You look at it.

[Ed Zitron]

But let's talk doom trolling because you have this fantastic piece that talks about the fact that all These companies, Anthropic, OpenAI, even DeepMind, to an extent, just keep selling things based on the destruction that AI will allegedly cause. Though they appear to be talking about another kind of technology entirely when you think about it.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, I mean, look, I think we have forgotten or overlooking how strange this is.

[Boost Mobile Advertiser]

Right?

[Cal Newport]

Because what we have here, let's abstract away from the particular products here and just say, what do we have here? More abstractly, as a business story, we have consumer product companies who are on a regular basis through interviews and official white paper releases, trying to terrify their consumers about the harms that their products are going to cause. And if this was any other industry, this would be completely mind boggling. The example I had in the New York Times op ed is like, if the CEO of Ford put out a white paper and was like, we're really worried that our F150s are gonna start catching on fire and burning people to death. But you know, automotive technology, we can't impede it and we're just going to get back to making them. Like, what the hell are they going

[Ed Zitron]

to go 2000 miles an hour at some point in the future. Yeah, we would just ban. Yeah, we'd ban it.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah. It's consumer safety.

[Ed Zitron]

No one would buy. Yeah, Just. It's really. It is something that's. I love the term doom trolling as well, because it really frames it well because it's. It's all part of a larger complex of them never talking about what they're building today. It's always this theoretical, scary thingy that might. It's always two years or two minutes away, depending on who you're talking to.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah. So what I did was I said, let's actually think this through because I'm also a digital ethicist. I was like, let's actually think this through with our ethics hat on. Right. Like, let's think through what particularly anthropic, I think is the most systematic in this propaganda campaign that I, you know, I analogized it to a cat leaving a dead bird on your doorstep and walking away. They just, every two to three weeks want to drop some sort of doom troll document to get people freaked out. And then they just back away and go back to what they're doing. And I kind of got fed up with this. So I said, let's do a moral analysis about this strategy. And I said, look, there's only two options here. Option number one, they really do think the technology they're building has put them on a trajectory to, in the best case, destroying the economy, or in the worst case, wiping out humanity, in which case every ethical system of any merit would say you have no other choice but to stop immediately what you're doing and use all of your time, energy, and treasure to try to stop other people from doing the same. The second case is you don't fully believe it, which means you are laundering the anxiety of hundreds of millions of people to try to make the bank balances of a vanishingly small number of original stockholders larger, which I think is equally as morally monstrous. There is no moral analysis that says trying to frequently terrify people about the things you're building while making no adjustments to the things you're building. There's no moral calculus that says that makes sense. But because AI is new and people don't understand the technology and it's shiny, and we saw James Cameron's movies. We somehow treat this different. And I say it's not different. This is a product that they are selling. They are not the stewards of an inevitable technology. They are building products according to business plans and trying to sell them. They need to act like consumer product Companies, we need to demand that they act like consumer product companies.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, another thing that you have in the piece is that it's unclear like that dichotomy is. It isn't clear why they're even doing this other to. Other than to make money. And also they're not acting as if any of this is true. They're not doing anything that suggests that they're actually concerned. You mentioned Dario Amadeus thing about how, oh, we might need a pause in AI or we should have that option. But that isn't actually what he was suggesting. He was suggesting something entirely different.

[Cal Newport]

Well, what they said was. And they got headlines. I had to look this up for the fact checker. They got every major publication to say anthropic calls for worldwide pause and AI development. You read that section of their white paper which by the way reads like sci fi that a ninth grader wrote.

[Boost Mobile Advertiser]

Right.

[Cal Newport]

It's not, it's pseudo scientific at best. It's not even really scientific. It's. I find their white paper sort of laughable. But they said in it we should do a worldwide pause because the thing we're building is so dangerous. But we can't do that unless everybody in the world does the same thing, including China, essentially. And if that's not the case, we have to just keep going full speed. So what they said was we should do worldwide pause, but of course we're not going to. It's really what they were saying there. But the point is. All right, so the report we're talking about here came out a few weeks ago. If you haven't read it, this is basically the report where they just out of nowhere wrote a white paper with a bunch of charts. They always have charts where they were saying pretty pictures, pretty pictures and an animation of.

[Ed Zitron]

I was just thinking of the little replicating thing. We'll get to self learning AI in a second.

[Cal Newport]

But the report basically said, huh, Claude code, which is a harness on top of an LLM for helping to run computer programs.

[Ed Zitron]

Just to be clear, a harness is basically a series of scripts that runs on top of the LLM.

[Cal Newport]

It's a computer program that prompts an LLM and then parses the response the LLM gives and then actually takes actions on your computer based on what it reads. Right. So it's the. Yeah, and that's a whole other conversation about the coding world and how much is the harness and how much is the LLM. But they basically said this, this tool, which is a harness, it's an LLM and some other things. This tool that computer software developers are using is getting really good. And you know that could be. We think that it might be looks like it's getting closer to being able to improve itself. And if it does recursive self improvement, which by the way is that just. It's at the core of philosophical superintelligence, right? This sort of Silicon Valley cult like thinking about computers replacing us. If it does, hey, maybe that'll be good for humanity, it'll cure all diseases, but also we could lose control of it. Thank you, have a nice day. And they walked away. They just put out that report. That's the report.

[Ed Zitron]

And the thing that I like about it as well is I think that we're in the next big thing is going to be RSI because so just to be clear for the listeners, recursive self improvement is just AI that builds itself. It is a theoretical concept. It has not happened yet. But mysteriously within the same six seven day period this came out and Sam Altman said to his staff in a slack message he knew would leak, oh yeah, we might delay our IPO if we have signs of rsi, if we have signs of AI that can build itself. Meta a year ago said in Personal Superintelligence we're seeing the early signs. And they're doing this because in my opinion maybe disagree California they've run out of ideas to the point that they're literally going back to what Sam Altman said in 2019. Yeah, we'll just ask the AI what to do whilst the AI had built it. These guys have so few ideas, they're just like Christ, can't we just make the AI do it?

[Cal Newport]

RSI is a get out of jail free car from a technical expertise standpoint. So we saw a lot of this a year or two ago when we had Project 2027. We had these sort of post GPT4 warnings of you know, existential crises. It's a get out of jail free card because if you ask like the authors of 2027 well explain to me what a system that is smarter than humans and can fire the missiles and over what does it look like how you architect it? Like what, what. What allows it to do it? And their answer is we don't have to figure that out. The AI will right now this is perfect. Not the just problem. We could history lesson this this although this goes all the way back to the 1960s. So there's a, there's a statistician applied mathematician named I.J. good and he wrote a paper. It was really like an information theory paper. But he wrote a paper where he said we, if we think about, he called it ultra intelligence. Really all you have to do is build a machine smart enough to improve itself and then that machine will improve itself, that machine will improve itself and then we'll get to ultra intelligent so we don't have to figure out how to do it. Then the danger lies in just making the machine fast enough. So it was like a bit of a semi thought experiment that became the ur document of what I call like the philosophical superintelligence cultists. So this sort of where the philosophers took this idea away from the technologist and began turning it into a sort of digital era scholasticism where they sort of abstracted away all technical details and just started building list of lists of, list of lists of all the different things that could happen. They just did a bunch of thought experiments about superintelligence and recursive self improvement. They then merged with the utopian singularity people that were coming out of sort of Kurzweil's orbit. And you kind of created this group that was non technical. This is not engineers, this is philosophers, ethicists and sort of gadflies and speculative fiction writers and fan fiction writers like Yakowski. And they kind of created this sort of dumorous utopian cult. And then what happened is that group was like, we should create a nonprofit to look at these ideas and we'll take Sam Altman and put him in charge. We'll call this OpenAI. And then suddenly they were like, oh my God, this Gen AI thing is working better than we thought. And we have now one of the, you know, someone coming out of this general kind of cultish, let's eschatological, you know, end times are going to come through computers was suddenly and accidentally in charge of the most important company in AI and one of his, you know, lieutenants left to start his own company and his name was Dario Amadei. So these, the two major players we have in AI right now come out of philosophical super intelligence which uses this idea of rsi. And it's like a parable, it's like an abstraction. This is not like a serious, it wasn't like a technical concern, it was like a thought experiment. And they are completely influencing the daily lives and psychological well being of hundreds of millions and the economic health of the entire world. So it's really an interesting world we've ended up in now. And all of which is to say I don't think we're talking enough about how weird these People are. I think we keep steering the conversation back to the technology itself. We keep steering the conversation back to like, well, could it take over or not? And we need to spend some more time saying, wait, who are these people and what are they doing? They're doom trolling. This makes no sense. No company ever, in the history of companies was ever trying to troll their own customers to be afraid of their products. They're treating their technology like a religious object. Like, we are underestimating the weirdness of these people. And when we put that into focus, it completely changes, I think, our own psychological relationship with what's going on right now.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, and I fully agree that it is almost. I think it's a distraction as well from the actual reality of what these things are. And I think it's a deliberate one. I naturally fall on the side of just thinking these people are deeply cynical. I've met people who think that Dario Amadei believes this stuff. Actually don't. I don't think they believe a fucking thing. I think that however you feel is however you feel. But I think that they correctly realize that they could very easily make people talk about something that doesn't exist just by mentioning it. How I saw a bunch of headlines that were like, wow, Anthropic sees the path to self building AI. No, they don't. Other than the fact they had a single sentence saying, I see the path to this. They don't have any proof. They don't have anything. And yeah, you're right, these people are weird. I have seen people on X, the Everything app, Twitter actually posting that we are in AI 2027, that everything matches up with AI 2027. I want to be clear that. And the reason I mentioned this is I just brought this up, is that in early 2026, in AI 2027, they say that Agent 1 has already started doing its own research. That's not happening. None of that's happening. In fact, none of this is happening. These people are just weird fantasists. I think, while there's the poison of the philosophers in them, I just think that Wario Amade and Sam Altman both. I think that they both realize that journalists are easily con, the investors are easily con, that you can just say shit and anyone will print it and believe you because you're a CEO.

[Cal Newport]

I don't know how to answer that question. Because the more I look into how quasi religious and cultish this sort of philosophical superintelligence community is, the more I get confused about what these people actually believe. Go Spend time in Silicon Valley. Go spend time.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, to be clear, when I say they, I'm referring specifically to Amadeus and Allman. Well, so I Could they fully believe that there are tons of people in the Valley that 100% believe this? That they believe that this is the path to that? Yeah, I think, just to be abundantly clear, I don't think everyone is cynical. I think they've been easily conned, but I don't think that they're cynical.

[Cal Newport]

No, I could, I could believe that as. And I could believe that as they. Their companies got larger and their leadership roles got larger, that they have stepped away. Like, oh, this is. This was a little naive. That's possible. But also, I saw a news report today that Dario. I don't know if this is true, so I'm just. This is a headline I haven't read yet, that he has like one direct report.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Cal Newport]

So I don't think, you know, he's. He's necessarily in the war room with a thousand engineers and like doing a lot of business strategy here too. So it's possible that these guys are more isolated than. Than we think. I don't know.

[Ed Zitron]

But if he has one direct report, he's not doing anything. He's just. What? He's going to meetings. Sorry, what were you saying?

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, but coming back to it, like, how much they believe or not, and I hope they don't, because again, I think it would be morally monstrous if you really believe this, that you're like, yeah, but I want to win an ipo. I want to make more money.

[Ed Zitron]

Exactly.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, yeah, I think that would be morally monstrous. Right. But if you think about what the benefits would be, this has led to a sort of discourse environment, essentially, where you have a normal technology that's advancing along a jagged frontier, which is what happens with, like, new technologies. There's certain applications where they feel like they're making progress and a lot of other applications where they're stuck. And so they've been making progress with these coding systems. That's kind of a scenario in which there's a lot of room for play with these type of systems. A lot of other things, like non coding agents, et cetera, is not going so well in math. They're making progress, but that's such a narrow field that it's not like it's not economically relevant to them. So you could see this as just like a normal technology. And in chat. Chat search, which is basically running Google search results through a language model, the natural language search, basically. So there are places they're making progress, other places they're stuck. That's like an interesting normal technology story. But if you layer on this other sort of eschological story about we are on our way to utopia or dystopia and we keep trying to keep you upset about that. Think about the way now when you're online, how people think and talk about AI, it's all about if something made, if there's some new feature that works, if there's some new chart that goes better, that's evidence for the prophecy is true. And so then that puts so much more power. If you otherwise just came to me and said, hey, we have this advance in our coding harnesses, I'd be like, I don't care, I'm not a software developer. But if you say, oh, that means that the prophecy of the RSI gods is true, now, suddenly that is really eventful and I'm really excited or scared. But I'm giving a lot of import to your company. So I do think it generates way more sense of import on these. Otherwise, like, I think very. My often very minor and jagged improvements. I mean, I think with other companies, if you kept putting out graphs that you created on measures you created, I was like, I don't know what that means. Tell me when, like, my business is going to be doing better, right? So there is a huge advantage, regardless of intention. There is a huge advantage to have the doom troll because as long as people are terrified or extremely excited about this future. And then there's a secondary advantage. This is cynical, but I just want to throw it out here, Ed, because I'm sensing this more. I think there's a whole other substrata of sort of like tech adjacent people who are online or not who got caught up a little bit in that type of hype type vision. And now their pride is engaged and so now they will interpret. I encounter this all the time, not even skepticism, just literally saying, oh, I don't think that tool. People are struggling to use that tool. Well, or this is not a very profitable model here, they'll have to find another model. They interpret it as like, well, this is embarrassing because I was just telling my siblings and everyone at dinner last night about. Because I use Claude code and I think it's HAL 9000 and I was just so excited about it. It's cognitive dissonance and I'm embarrassed. And so now I am a warrior for the prophecy. So I think you also have that substrate who are like, yeah, but what about. And then, you know, some metric that went up or something like that, and that's way in their benefit as well. You have a soldiers of marketers that are trying to basically protect their pride.

[Ed Zitron]

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[Boost Mobile Advertiser]

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[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, you've absolutely nailed it. It's the pride thing again. Hadn't thought of that. But you're right, the way that they react when you give. I mean, I just published OpenAI's financials and the pretzels. They're contorting themselves into the ways in which it's Silicon Valley has always been this proudly atheistic, meritocratic, rugged pragmatism world. Or at least this is how they sold themselves. It's not about your feelings, it's about can you ship co? Is your software good? Does it make money? But something about this is really entered into the realm of religiosity. Not even faith, because faith is a much stronger and more fundamentally sound thing. This is religious cultism. But the God is capital. Like you can say it's AI, but the God is capitalism. It is this idea that the, the big money people who are constantly threatening you, like, they just, they're like, yeah, it's going to kill you. It's going to take everything. I guess it's Pascal's Wager as well. It's, well, if. I don't know if this is the case, but if they're all saying it, if I'm wrong, Rocco's Basilisk will drop an anvil on me. I guess it's, it's frustrating, but also, I don't know what these people will do if the bubble, when the bubble bursts, I don't know why I'm saying if. When it bursts, I don't know what these people will do because their worldview is built around existing outside of reality. Almost like that. Just this chat bot will become God will become autonomous. And because I was there saying it would become autonomous, I will be given something. It's unclear what the reward is other than simpering. And there's something in it for them. That's the, that's the thing. It's like, I guess maybe it's community. They're finding it's replace AI with God, just like with church. And they would mock whoever was talking about it. They would mock anyone who took a sign of, well, this is proof that God exists. But they would look at a meter study and they go, well, that's proof that AGI is coming. And it's so strange.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah. It's like, hey, look at how complicated the structure of the leaf is. Is Paley intelligent design? Like God exists because of the argument from design? Like they would mock that right in two seconds. Yeah. But they're like, hey, we can draw a unicorn in ticks using like a GPT4 prompt. The AI God is coming.

[Ed Zitron]

But it's so strange as well. I've been writing about Silicon Valley bubble recently. This idea that basically the valley itself is a bubble inflating that will burst going back 10, 15 years because they ran out of new ideas that they've not had anything good. Not had a new smartphone or a new app store or a new cloud computing in a while. And I think that that's what's fed into this as well. Because you've got that kind of desperation that we've run out of big ideas and then added this layer of fear mongering plus childish philosophy. Very like, very much like this shit must have hit. So this would hit so hard if I was 12.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Goes to our BE like, Holy shit, yeah. Oh, I'm using this computer today and tomorrow it'll be ultra intelligent. I'm so smart for finding this first. It's deeply sad. I didn't think I could be more embarrassed by Silicon Valley. But the fact that these people are being this weird is. I like, we need to call them weird. It's actually kind of unsettling as well. It's unsettling that also that you are one of the few people just saying it, but that everyone else is acting like this is normal or rational or in any way logical.

[Cal Newport]

Well, I'm trying to activate A bigger crowd here, right?

[Ed Zitron]

Good.

[Cal Newport]

Here's what I think we need. I think your use of the word embarrassing is key because the trend I'm seeing, which I don't like, is this idea of the people who instinctually do not like what's going on with these AI companies are trying to match the intensity and hype of what they're saying, but going the other direction. Right. And so they're like, they're destroying everything, right? Like the environment will all be destroyed by the data centers and all education is going to end. And the idea being is like, I need to be as like, as intense about all of the terribleness that your technology will cause as you are about like the good it will cause. Where I don't think that's playing into their hands. I think the right reaction is ridicule and embarrassment. This is where things make fun of them. If you read anthropic white paper, you read these things. It's. We're now going to go through, we envision four possible futures for where this technology could come. And then they just make up like four 12 year old sci fi. Maybe the technology will take over, but it will be in more of a sort of a Churchillian mold and we'll wear top hats and that. We could imagine a council of, of humans, but they would probably be like one third humans and two third robots and you know, like, just like working. It's just, it's just nonsense, right? Like this goofy. It's not, it's not philosophy, it's not, it's not technology, it's not political science. It's just goofy, right? And I think that, and I said this in the op ed, I said the zeitgeist on this should. Could change really quickly, right? Where it's like, all right, Dario, is the AGI in the room with you right now? Can you see the AGI in the room with you? Right? Because it's, that's like, that's the reaction I think we need. Plus, forget that. Justify why I'm spending a thousand dollars a month on tokens. Like, I don't want to hear your report about, you know, hey, Ford, I don't need your report about the future in which we'll have transformers that will like help us police our streets. I am spending this much money on gas for my F150. Like, tell me like, why that's worth it, right? Like just continually bring it back to. You have really three products you're selling right now. Great. Sell a product. It's this interesting technology you're making a good product out of it. Sell me, what are the benefits? Why is it worth the money? And I will take for granted. And if you better say it's not going to harm anyone because otherwise fix it so it doesn't like that should just be a given.

[Ed Zitron]

That's your job to fix.

[Cal Newport]

That's your job to fix and you don't. And just to throw in another moral argument I put in the New York Times op ed, it is not actually a moral argument to say, there's this thing we want to do that's going to cause potentially a lot of harm and destruction, but that guy's going to do it. And as long as he's doing it, I get to do it too. That is what my 8 year old says, right? He's like, I know, but like, he stole the cookies. Why can't I steal it too? So I do not understand this argument. It was in the latest anthropic paper. We're building this technology, it might come alive and we might lose control of it. But how can we stop? Because China is also building the technology. And what if they build it and it comes alive and comes control? Why don't we get to do it too? What's the moral argument there? This is not like a nuclear deterrence argument that if you somehow destroy humanity first, what's the advantage there? Right? Like, what game have you won? So I don't understand that. But my bigger point here is like, yeah, I think we need to activate. I'm working on a big article now for a trade magazine for engineers, actually where I'm making this case. It's a cry to cure. You need to stand up and say, that's nonsense. Let's talk about your real technology. I know about this because I think there's a lot of people like me who are on the wrong coast. We're not on the West Coast. We don't. We haven't gone to those cult meetings who are like, there's interesting technology here and I want to hear about the products. And this is actually where you and I maybe even differ a little bit. I end that piece by saying I'm pissed off because this should have been, for a nerd like me, an exciting time. This is a cool technology. It's hard to make products out of it. But we should have been like kind of excited about, oh, I never thought about doing that with this. Oh, isn't that cool? What's going on? Instead everyone is terrified. Like, you ruin this moment because of God knows why. We don't even have to get into it. So I think the right response from like actual engineers who are not part of that cult and you know, you got to swallow your pride. I get it. You were really excited to your cousin after you use cloud code, like, that's okay. Swallow your pride a little bit and say, this is doom trolling. And it's embarrassing. Can we talk about the real technology like a normal product? There's cool things you can build. Some stuff isn't working. I want to know if my stock market portfolio is going to crash. Like, let's just be normal. Stop the weird stuff. Just stop it. Like you're a real company trying to sell real things. Let's talk about products. Like, why I want to spark a revolution to bring things back to normal.

[Ed Zitron]

I fully agree. And I even said, I was on Chris Hayes, his show a couple of weeks ago and I said, I think we should legally ban boosters from using the future tense. I don't think they should be allowed to say if either. I don't think they should be able to say will. I think they should only be allowed to talk about what's coming out today. You can go two weeks in the future, max.

[Boost Mobile Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I think that because when you read any story about AI that's positive, it always speaks in the future tense. It does not speak about what's happening now. And when they do speak about what's happening now, it's the vaguest stuff in the world. It's like it can write or it can autonomously write software. Is the software good? No. Is it stable? No. Can you rely. Can you even actually do anything with it if you don't know what you're doing? No. Is the code overly verbose? Yes. Like, it's like there are tons of problems with it, but one sentence allows the generalities to grow. And also the. I think there's a very obvious reason they don't talk about the present. Because it's kind of boring. It is like it's just in comparison to a big, sexy autonomous robot. It's incredibly boring to say. But also the business doesn't work. The business, like, the business doesn't function. If they have to talk about why it costs a thousand dollars of API tokens to do something. They have to talk about their business and they have to talk about what it does today. And the problem is with that is. So my position on this is I don't mind on device models. I actually think that's all that's going to remain of LLMs. I think maybe we'll get some rag search stuff here and there. But I don't have an animus with the non data center ones. But I do agree that there needs to be. People do need to stop fighting fire with fire. As far as being like if they're going to doomer, we're going to say that all data centers are the worst. Which they are. The water story is murky, but the environmental story is very real. Especially with the behind the meter gas turbines.

[Cal Newport]

And the economic story, which you've been good on too is like, there's so much more money coming into building these centers and their centers but being built. And that's going to be its own issue.

[Ed Zitron]

But also just, just fundamentally these weirdos are trying to make you scared of cloud software. Like that's, that's my thing that I keep. It's like if such an adela every two weeks is like, you'll never fucking believe what Microsoft Word's going to do next, mate. You're never going to believe what Power BI is going to do with the dashboard. I saw a dashboard on Power BI and I'm pretty sure next week it's going to, it's going to try and kill someone. You'd be like, you sound like a lunatic, man. You sound like a crazy person. This is an insane. Sundar Pichai.

[Boost Mobile Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Google search is going, oh, any, any week now. You just laugh at, you would laugh at him.

[Cal Newport]

But. And the two Microsoft guys are, are no Mustafa Suleiman. They're. He's trying to. Because he's not, he's trying to use the Dario Sam playbook, but he's not good at it. And so it's kind of. He's like, I think, you know, AI is going to, it's. It's not only going to take over all jobs, it's going to create new jobs just to automate them. And it's going to do it Thursday. It'll do it Thursday. How about that? Is that guys, Is that, is that. I mean, it's like, do you like.

[Ed Zitron]

It's turning a big dial. It says AI on it. It's just like I. Do you like this? I love it as well. Because he'll, he'll even talk and be like, yeah, 12 to 18 months away. We're going to have super intelligence, but also anthropic's too expensive. We can't pay them anymore.

[Boost Mobile Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

But also this is normal. And it's not going to take jobs, but it's going to take all the jobs in two Years, but not today, but not next week, but maybe in six months. And it's just that, yeah, they're using the Dario playbook with everything because they're just making the same things and they don't work particularly well. It's just so. These people are so weird. Now you've said it, now it's all I can think about.

[Cal Newport]

So here's the, here's the logic I also want people to avoid because it came up into what you were saying there. And I feel like maybe Chris did this a little bit in your interview. I have to go back and listen to it. But this, this logic, and I get it and I'll give an explanation for it from a psychological perspective in a second. But there's this logic of if there's something I can point to where I did something that I thought was like, impressive or interesting or better than I thought. Every prophecy is true.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Cal Newport]

And I think, I think it's, I don't know, psychological self preservation or. I don't know what it is, but I don't under. This, this is again from like a logic point of view. I teach logic to undergraduates. Like propositional logic. I don't understand. This is a, it's an argument that's missing premises. Right. So they're going from the premise of, hey. And it's almost always the same thing. It's almost always a non engineer using Claude code because it's really fun. It's like a slot machine especially. It just like creates code that works for simple things. And you're like this, it's really fun. Like I've talked, I know people who are like, they're, they're just like, this is my new hobby. Like, it's all, it's really fun if you're into that type of thing. Right. We talked about this earlier. It's like model trains for engineers. You do that, you're like, that was really cool. And then you translate that experience of like, I really enjoyed that to, you know, I wonder what salt mine the AI overlords are going to assign me to. And it's a weird that, that leap of logic. Can we just keep it as like, okay, this was really cool that you built this dashboard. We don't have to leap from that to therefore, everything Dario Amadei said must be true. It's not this binary balancing on a fulcrum where we're just looking for one little piece of evidence will tip it one way or the other. So I think we need to be careful about these elaborations It's a jagged technology. Some things make more progress than others. Some things are cool, some things are more, more narrow than you would think. But like, you know, let's see. Oh, I, I built a really cool web based game in Fable 5 which actually is probably just copying the source code of a similar game.

[De'Longhi Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Cal Newport]

Does that mean like recursive self improvement is coming? So what I'm hoping we can do is stop making these leaps of logic where if you, if you encounter any sort of feature or have any sort of positive experience with an AI product that you then leap immediately to the conclusion that everything involved in the prophecy about the future of AI be true. Or to put, you know, someone like you and me now it has to be put on the defensive of I did something positive with AI. All right, Ed, doesn't that now mean everything anyone has ever said about AI is true? Convince me I'm wrong. I think that logic is backwards, that these grand proclamations of we're going to have self improving AI, we're going to automate all jobs used a Carl Sagan quote. Those remarkable claims require a remarkable amount of evidence. Why is everyone so quick of like this product which you're working on and putting billions of dollars on, of course you're going to keep adding new features or finding things to improve. That is a given, of course. What technology in the history of world would you have no improvements on? If you're spending, you know, 10 to 20 billion dollars a year in R and D, of course it's going to have improvements. Why are we leaping from that? That like that means that anything you say, any speculative future you give about, you know, some sci fi future is now the default unless we can prove otherwise. So we got to stop that logic too. We should be able to discuss, enjoy or get around the implications of particular AI features without having to have that shift to a conversation about RSI or widespread job automation.

[Ed Zitron]

I think what it is, it comes back to the pride thing. I think the, there's also something about LLMs and the way they make people feel I like I'm on the spectrum. Autistic people have probably worked that out from the third 10,000 word article. But I don't feel anything when they're nice to me. I feel absolutely nothing when the chat bot is like, wow, that was a great idea. I don't have, I don't respect it. I don't care what it thinks because it doesn't think. I don't see anything about what it said. If it tells me I Have a good idea. I'm like, I don't care, I feel nothing. I think that a lot of people do feel something. I think when they see these things, compliment them and do an impression of brainstorming with them, which is really just talking to yourself in the mirror, which is. Can help. That can help. I've done it. I think that it makes them feel good. And also your Claude code example, I think that people feel very good about that and they feel very proficient and it makes them feel capable at something perhaps they were incapable of before. And thus if you say to them, well, okay, that's just, that's fine. They go, no, no, I'm a big boy. I think there's something kind of almost childish about it, like, no, I'm special, I'm spell mental. Why aren't you impressed with. And it's something the models are built to do. The ingratiation I think is important. But also I think that the tech industry has done a really good job over the years of convincing us that everything gets better and better and better, even though it doesn't. Even though a lot of Google search has got worse, Facebook's got worse, Twitter's got worse. Honestly argue many parts of Blue sky have got worse. The it's less reliable. At least the experience of using the computer has got worse. We've hit a wall with innovation in general, but this thing, because it can kind of resemble anything if you want it to, I think touches something dark in some people. Not evil, but just like something very vulnerable and kind of weak and kind of gullible. Where they say, well, if I'm getting this out of this, then I'm part of the future and I need someone to be impressed by this. This is now a part of my identity. And that's. I think that that might also be the differentiator here as well. I don't remember, sure you had forum wars about gaming consoles. I'm sure you had, you have Android versus iOS, whatever. Not like this. Yeah, nothing like this. And I think that it touches something in people.

[Cal Newport]

Well, I. So I think there's a whole class of people where that's what's going on. Especially the sort of bro adjacent tech bro adjacent people on, you know, X who are always yelling, well, but what about this? What about this? Right? And then I think the other thing that happens for a lot of people especially who are a little bit more tech distance is it's a way of dealing with anxiety. Right?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Cal Newport]

And if you think about this, and like we've talked about COVID before you and I, but I think it offers some good analogies. Here is like, one of the ways when the virus was spreading but hadn't quite got to the US or was just coming or the hospitals were overloaded in Italy or whatever is like, one of the ways to deal with it psychologically was to get out in front of it and be like, this is going to be really bad. Like, I, I, you know, I'm on it and, you know, you feel more prepared. Like, I'm not, I'm not going to be caught off guard. I'll be the one telling people how bad this is. And like, somehow that does help you a little bit deal with, like, the anxiety of, like, impending dread. And I think there's a lot of that going on with this as well. Is like, I'm anxious about this doom troll and I've been doom trolled so many times, I'm going to kind of get out in front of it now. If I'm the one saying, well, wait a sec, I get so many. I am. For a lot of people now, they're like stress pacifier of like, well, what about this Go right? Like, I saw this thing that upset me. Like, doesn't that mean that means. I think that means it is going to take it over. And then they're kind of hoping that me or someone else will come in and be like, you don't really, it's okay. Like, that's not as big of a deal as it seems. So I think both are going on. It's either like, this gives me meaning, like, I'm a part of the future. If you're like, using cloud code and if you're just using, like, chatgpt for natural language search, you might just be really anxious because you hear these earnest podcasts where people are interviewing people about we'll have to eat our dogs when the jobs are gone. And you're like, well, if I get out in front of it, at least I feel like I have some autonomy in this dark thing that's happening. And so it's like common psychology. Both of the psychologies equal dollar and cents for a. Again, I keep going back to remember is a vanishingly small number of early investors who have large equity positions in these companies. That is, who benefits from all of that, they will benefit immensely. Because no matter what that psychology is, this company is at the fulcrum of the future and that's worthy of investing in. Even if their revenue story is murky, even if their product story is, there's no moat. And it is. I mean I don't want to get into the economic weeds, but this is like a Clayton Christensen fever dream. What is happening with these companies and their products? What does that mean? So he had this idea of talking about disruption from below that the problem is you're working on a high end version of a product and you don't want to undermine your market so you try to keep it expensive and high end and then someone comes in from below with a different way of doing it that's much cheaper and you're screwed because you ignored that market. All of these the use cases that are useful now that people are spending money on like software development tools and natural language search. Here's the problem. You don't need a 10 trillion parameter language model to do this. And this is why these companies are so screwed and I think are trying to IP as fast as they can. Is that like someone's going to come along and say we're using a 20 billion parameter open source model with a really smart coding harness that we just coded ourselves on top of it and tweaked for the last two years. And you know what, people like it better than Claude code and it's a hundredth of the price.

[Boost Mobile Advertiser]

Right?

[Cal Newport]

Or natural language search. You don't need Claude Fable 5 to summarize Google search results. Right? And the economics make no sense. But a small model could, non chip model could. That is why they're in trouble economically.

[Ed Zitron]

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[Redfin Advertiser]

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[Nissan Advertiser]

From the show last night to this drive, why is it never chill? Because this is our life backstage on the road. It's loud, messy, real. And that's the best part. Whole crew, no plan, just moving. Good thing Nissan builds for that kind of chaos. Not just test tracks. Real life scenes, late nights, road trips, all of it. That's why it holds up. Nissan was ranked number one in initial quality among mainstream brands by J.D. power. Yeah, you can tell. 2026 Nissan Rogue built for what really happens for J.D. power 2025 US Initial Quality Study Award information visit JDPower.com awards awards based on 2025 model year. Newer models may be shown Unlock the

[Boost Mobile Advertiser]

savings at Boost Mobile and save up to $600 a year. I've been scouting these big carries for a minute now and I've seen them pull the same play a thousand times. They promise you the world, then hit you with a price hike right when the game gets tight. But boost mobile, their $25 a month unlimited wireless plan, is the most consistent player on the floor. No contracts and no price hikes. Unlock the Savings [e-mail] Unlock based on average annual single line payment of AT&T Verizon and T Mobile customers compared to 12 months of the Boost Mobile unlimited wireless plan as of January 2026. For full offer details, visit boostmobile.com.

[Ed Zitron]

I also think that there is, and I do think there is a deeply cynical thing here. Well, let me reframe that. I think that people have to find ways to rationalize capitalism. I think that the only way that they could. The amount of times I hear a week of just like Amazon web services, just like Ubers, just like this. I have restated that point a hundred times. People sometimes listen, people sometimes don't.

[Cal Newport]

But.

[Ed Zitron]

But people need to find a way, I think to rationalize the massive expenditures and the current products do not provide that rationalization. Nothing about ChatGPT or Claude, or Claude Code or fable or whatever actually rationalises this doesn't make A trillion dollars is too much money for anything outside of like universal healthcare and housing. In fact probably could have taken care of that really easily. But nevertheless, people see that and they don't want to deal with the natural kind of dissonance they get, which is, wow, are all the companies run by people who don't know what's going on? And the answer is yes. Like I don't think that there's actually a grand conspiracy. Oh my God. The emails I get every week, people being like, it's surveillance. It's a secret surveillance state. It's secret. It's a. Yeah, it's so secret. It's on CNBC every day.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, oh, they're all. They're doing secret data centers. Yeah, it's called Oracle. Yeah, it's been. It's called Oracle. That's what Oracle does. Oracle has a huge like that's very well known. What do you like? I think people need there to be a conspiracy because otherwise the answer is. Which is what I believe, which is none of these companies had a plan. I think Sam Altman and Dario Amity thought we're going to throw a bunch of money at this and then God will come out. Yeah, money, money. So much money. And then they will have asi, AGI, whatever they call it. And then it happened and then that didn't. They hit the diminishing returns at the end 2024 and since then they've been kind of harnessing non LLM stuff on top of LLMs in an attempt to make them do stuff.

[Cal Newport]

But that's been so successful by the way. Think about the doom trolling. This is another advantage of it. They've completely obfuscated exactly that point that you just made, which is that pre training scaling again, we've talked about this on the show but has had diminishing returns, you know, starting after 2024. And so all of the improvements that have come since then has been post training, pre trained Models and building hand coding harnesses with more and more special cases plugged into it to find more places for them to be useful. Which is a completely different trajectory than 2023 where they were like, no, we'll just keep pre trained scaling these things till we have AGI. And they've created a sense of like, well AI has been drastically improving, hasn't it? And you say, well wait a second. If you told me in 2022, you know when you're like, we're going to scale our way to AGI and our vision of AGI is software development tools.

[Nissan Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Like it's just dreadfully boring in comparison.

[Cal Newport]

It's boring for natural language Google. But you're like, but it's not just like a feature that like Google would just kind of otherwise would have just kept adding and tweaking in a very like economically reasonable way saying forever.

[Ed Zitron]

It's like, yeah, I thought like the reason that people like LLM search is pretty simple, that it responds to search how people have always used search, which is questions. You're like, hey, what about this? And this? I've used AI mode with Google maybe three times and I always use it as like a trolling expedition to say like has anyone ever said anything like this? And then it would gave me a bunch of fake citations. Like just that happens every time. But then I'll find one weird PDF and it'll be like, oh cool. But isn't that if you didn't. If LLMs didn't exist, I would expect Google search to do that by now. Like that would. That feels like a natural progression, but it's just normal kind of boring. So I always say it's like, oh, if they called it library models it wouldn't be that big a deal, but it would be a more accurate like you just choose a regular name. This people weren't freaking out about platform as a service tools. Didn't they hear all this bullshit about Kubernetes, which is way more fun to say than large language models. People have taken this and the thing is I don't think that the strategy was always we're gonna doom troll. Like I don't think they sat and thought about it very much. I think they just kind of oathmaxed their way. They just bumbled into it and like it's scary. And then they saw how well it worked. Yeah, I think, I genuinely think on an ethical level it's one of the most disgraceful things anyone's ever done. Technology, Technology. I think it's just on top of the obfuscation of what these things actually do. It's horrible. It's a. It's a cruel thing to do. I hear from people all the time being like, am I going to lose my job to this? I'm like, why is my boss telling me I'm going to lose my job to this?

[Cal Newport]

Why?

[Ed Zitron]

What is this? Why is it different? Why am. And I think when they hear all the doomerism and they use the product and they use Claude code and they go, oh, it barfed out an open source CRM, they're like, oh God, they're right. Imagine what someone who kind of knew what they were doing could do. Oh, I'm scared.

[Cal Newport]

I don't think that.

[Ed Zitron]

I think that they shouldn't be able to sleep at night. I think it's an evil way to market.

[Cal Newport]

I would say the way I would think of. I put on my bentham hat here. Let's use a utilitarian calculus. The net harm that doom trolling as a communication strategy has caused in terms of mental health. Just like people feeling bad, the net harm caused by doom trolling far, far, far, far far exceeds any the grand total of benefits that this AI technology has produced so far. Like, I don't see any other way for that calculus to work out. I was just reading one of the many papers that are actually now surveying and studying AI in the workforce and they looked at this paper and they asked people that these software developers estimate how much time you've saved or whatever, and it was 11 hours a week we're saving. And then they asked them, is your company performing better at all? Like, has this made any impact on your bottom line? And it was like a vanishingly small percent. It was like, yeah, there's anything different on the performance. Was that worth or making like software developers maybe by some measures 1.2 times more efficient worth causing. I think the negative toll of this psychologically is like getting close to Covid territory. It's like population wide. You are stressing out everybody day after day. They've made the last two years for anyone who's following the news psychologically miserable. That is a real harm. That is a real measurable harm. Like, I really hate that I have to deal with this like time and again. It reminds me of having to deal with the pandemic, which was like a psychologically fraught time because. Because every day we're being bombarded. But at this time, a, there's not a virus that's infecting a lot of people and B, the people who are like warning about all the doom in this analogy. It would be as if they were the ones in the lab doing the research that was producing the virus. That's the craziest thing about it. Right? I mean, imagine if in 2019, someone was like these viruses, coronaviruses, doing gain of function research could really, really infect the whole world. Of course they're going to get out. We can't contain them. Oh, by the way, but we got to make sure you're seriously doing this gain of function research on these viruses and we're not going to stop because, you know the Chinese. Well in this case. But whatever.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, someone else goes a different direction there.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, someone else might do it. So, like, what can we do? Like stop building the viruses then? Anyways, so. So I think we have to account for the net psychological harm. And I think, I mean, I don't think our current government can do this, but I think that's something where the government should, in an abstract world be involved. Like, oh, there's a small number of people who are causing a huge amount of distress and anxiety around our entire country. Of course we're going to get in the game and we're going to pause all your model deployments until like, you either convince us that that's not the case and you admit, like, yeah, we were kind of making that up, or if you don't want to say that, then like, no, you don't get a release as product. You're causing mass pro mass unhappiness and damage. Right. To our entire country. You have to account for that. You don't get to just do that. So it is. I think the harms so far have exponentially outweighed the tangible benefits.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm just also going to be honest. Yeah, the model AI companies are terrible. I also think the media has categorically failed here and should feel fucking ashamed of themselves. I think the media is as much

[Cal Newport]

to blame because I think I'm going to put it, I'm going to put a fundamental blame on venture capital. I'll give you my quick pitch on that.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, absolutely.

[Cal Newport]

I mean, you have to understand the economics of especially high tech venture capital coming out of Silicon Valley, the whole model. And again, this is all just because you have some institutional investors and rich people that you want to make richer. That's it. That's the whole underlying goal. Right. And their whole model is we have to find new areas where there's something to be monetized in which there's possibilities for unicorns. So we have to find new territories where you have the possibility of getting in early and having an investment turn out to be a multi billion dollar company. Right. The web. That's what started the 90s with the web. And most of those bets failed because of the first dot com crash. A couple paid off like Amazon. Then you had Web two. It turned out attention was a resource you could monetize. So it's like discovering a new mineral or oil. There was a huge fortune to be had. The venture capitalists could get in there early. They had massive returns betting on meta betting on the social media companies. Right? Then they're like we need another. Because you have to keep finding every time you raise a new fund you need a giant new resource that you can monetize to get to early. So the next thing they tried was crypto. Crypto was just Andreessen Horowitz saying there's no more unicorns left in social. We're going to try to create a new field in which we can create unicorns. And they really flogged crypto. This is the future. This is the future. And it wasn't especially for software. And I got yelled at for saying this, but I'm literally an expert on this. My doctorate's the theory of distributed systems. It's a stupid way to build a distributed system. And, and I was right. And no one built the systems that way. So that kind of failed. This was the next territory. And it doesn't say this technology is not interesting or potentially useful, but as you said, it's not trillion dollar useful. Not yet. So why did all that money come in is because a, we're talking about one street in one city. We're talking like Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto like the people on that one street. Or like we need to find a new territory that can produce $100 billion companies so that we can get the returns that we expect to keep our lifestyle up.

[Ed Zitron]

That's what I've been saying this for years. It's the rock com bubble. It's. They're out of big ideas and AI was the panacea. It was the API would be the way to build new startups. It would be the way for enterprise companies to sell more software with new add ons. It would be the way for business software to take off consumer software. It was meant to be the solution because they're doing exactly the same thing as the AI companies are doing, saying yeah, the AI will just fix this. What are we going to build with this? Or the AI will work out what's the product? AI will work it out. It's honestly a kind of a pathetic culture.

[Cal Newport]

I don't think they even care about that. I think they're like, okay, if we put the money in this now, what's the strike price going to be at the ipo?

[Ed Zitron]

That's what. Yeah, that's why I'm getting at that.

[Cal Newport]

They don't care if it works in the end or not. They're like, we, we want a SpaceX. Look at that.

[Ed Zitron]

But the theoretical that I'm saying is that the idea of large language models as an API or a consumer product was what they were excited about because you can just extrapolate the various things. But I must, I must get back to it. I think the media is responsible. I 100% believe the media is responsible. They are the ones that at the times, Ezra Klein, how much AGI bullshit is that guy shoveled? How many times Bernie Sanders going out there and talking to Claude. I realize that's politics, but they put it on YouTube for a reason. How many different outlets have talked about the jobpocalypse that does not exist or the saaspocalypse claiming that software companies are being sold off because of AI disruption that doesn't exist. The media bought and sold this. In 2023 there was a Guardian headline that said Sam Alton was a little bit scared. It's just without that, none of this was possible. And perhaps they were just being a megaphone for real anxieties from these companies. Or perhaps they were just looking for a narrative that would get clicks.

[Cal Newport]

I don't think it's clicks. I think they underestimated the weirdness of these people and they took them at face. This is my, you know, having many feet within the world of media. What I really think happened is it didn't cross their minds that these people are super strange cultist weirdos. They don't know about Yukowski. They don't know about the Rationalists. They don't know about the X rays community that came out of the Rationalist and then merged with the technological singularities. And that they also think they're going to live forever by harvesting the blood of children and all. They were just like, these are engineers. I don't know about technology. They do. They're telling me this. Why would they lie? I've heard that word for word from multiple early on multiple journalists. And I think it was all being seen through the frame of COVID where that was in the recent history. I don't know anything about viruses. But the virologists were like, trust. Like, this is something I can't directly observe, right? Because there's not very many people sick. But trust us, this is going to spread and this is a really big deal. And while trucks. The virologists know what they talk about. Why would they lie? And I don't want to miss that story. I think that there was a lot of that going on of these are the people building the tech. Because I heard this phrase from so many people. These are the people building the technology. They know about it best. I'm not a computer scientist. I mean, I am, but like, if I'm being the journalist and this is why, like the people who were not like, where is the resistance coming from? Is computer scientists like me who don't live near Silicon Valley. And we're like, well, I do understand this technology and what the hell are you talking about? But I think for the journalist it was. And now they're just. And this is why I'm wrote that op ed. I'm trying to spread the word more. These guys are weird. They're weird. And by the way, they're mainly guys too, because I think women were going to put up with this weird, you know, I'm going to go in my room and play with my Star wars toys nonsense, right? I don't want to. Who knows what that tells us about our, our gender, Ed? But it's not great that it's all men doing this craziness. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It's like Tim Reed Gabriel isn't particularly sold on this. For example, like, I don't think Emily

[Cal Newport]

Bender, like, a lot of the, like, hardcore skeptics are like, you boys with your Star Wars.

[Ed Zitron]

What are you up to, lads?

[Cal Newport]

Yeah.

[Redfin Advertiser]

What do you mean?

[Ed Zitron]

You don't have friends, do you?

[Cal Newport]

Is this, is this related to fantasy football? What guys? What is this? Right, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

The funny thing is though, there is something to that where it's, it is a very male technology. And I do wonder, like, it's not. Not something I think two white guys can necessarily get into in any, any depth without a woman present. So that we could actually have a rounded conversation. But it is interesting that pretty much everyone running this stuff is a guy and the majority of them are white fellas. And they're all claiming that everything they build is amazing. I don't know, perhaps there's something going on there too. It's just.

[Cal Newport]

Is there something. Yeah, white guys are good at is thinking Everything we do is amazing. We are pretty well trained. We are pretty well Trained at that. But this is why I do think it's important, is why I wrote that Op Ed is like, I want to name what they're doing. This is doom trolling. I think you need to understand these people are weird. And we can't take what they're saying at face value. We just can't because they're too weird. They've proven time and again. But the key message I would also want, like, if you're listening to this pod, if you're listening to this podcast now, do not interpret this conversation as, oh, I'm going to categorize this in a claim that AI doesn't work. And therefore, if I see something cool that AI does, this conversation isn't relevant. You know, Cal was wrong. This is. It's really not about that is what I'm talking about right now. I am talking about the way that we actually talk about AI, how we treat it as a business, what is morally appropriate and what is morally not. And these are normal products. And to me, this isn't. It's not vaporware. I mean, I think the ability to parse natural language like a language model can do is, like, it's fascinating. And I'm also surprised by how hard it's been to come up with a lot of good, useful, economically viable products off of that ability. Like, we're still with software development tools and rewriting Google search results. I actually thought we would have a lot more interesting tools that we were using in our everyday life right now because there's been some problems that we didn't think about. So this whole conversation is about, stop treating this like a demon that's been summoned. Make fun of doom trolling, because that's kind of embarrassing. This is the, you know, this is the magic, the gathering club at the high school table. And just treat this like a normal product. And like, I don't want to hear, let's just, what are the products you're selling? What are the benefits? How much do they cost? Is it worth the money? And what other products are you working on? Like, let's just have normal conversations. So do not, as a listener, categorize this in this sort of light versus dark is like, okay, this means AI doesn't work. And this team says it does work. And then I'm going to try to assess in my mind, is AI useful or not? And if it is, then I have to be ready to mate with machines. And if it doesn't, then stop all that sort of extreme thinking. I just want us to talk about this like a normal interesting but normal technology. And normal people should look at the way that these companies are doom trolling us and say that's strange. Please stop. And in the meantime I am going to have to really make fun of you. Like I think that's where we need to be.

[Ed Zitron]

I fully agree. And I think all of this large language models in a vacuum in very interesting technology. The problem is they tried to scale them like a giant multi trillion dollar industry which I don't think they fit into the future of LLMs in whatever form they have is on device. They never should have been scaled at this scale. Like it never made sense. Never once. And in the end it is normal technology. And that is the thing to always take away from this, which is you wouldn't freak out about kubernetes, you wouldn't Microsoft Word doing autocomplete shouldn't scare you. Grammarly shouldn't scare you. This is the actual technology itself is not scaring you. It's the people around it and the people's extrapolations. And also like you said, the willingness we have to believe people who are working on something who have supposed expertise. As if expertise guarantees that you're correct or indeed guarantees that you know what you're talking about or indeed that you can see the future. Yeah.

[Cal Newport]

So there we go. I mean I think that's it.

[Nissan Advertiser]

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[Cal Newport]

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Who knows?

[Ed Zitron]

No, no.

[Cal Newport]

I'm already seeing like the comments on my New York Times piece is just falling into the like, like oh, you, you, you said somewhere in there there could be a benefit of AI you apostate. AI is terrible. Or like the other side is, is like well, well how do you explain the fact, you know, I'm. Oh my God, is this written by AI? These comments. I get this sent this all the time. These, these comments that are like I work for a such and such company and what used to take me three weeks I now do in like six seconds. And you know, it's just like falling. People are just falling in their camps about like either you know, one of the, the priests of the the new religion or you know, you're the, you're the, the, the, the Canaanites who are kicked out of the land or something. Right? Like it's like you got to be in like one of these two like extremes and don't do that. Just say like treat it like a normal technology. Stop doom trolling.

[Podcast Advertiser]

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[Ed Zitron]

Is.

[Cal Newport]

Is stupid. Stop it. Like treat it like a normal technology either. Stop. If you really think you're destroying the world or start talking about it like pickup trucks. Right? We we don't need this in between. So hopefully, hopefully we can convince a few more people about that.

[Ed Zitron]

I hope so. Cal, thank you so much for joining me.

[Cal Newport]

Always a pleasure.

[Ed Zitron]

Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osawski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects@matt matasowski.com m a t t o s o w s k-I.com you can email [e-mail] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat. Where's your ed to visit the discord and go to r betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts

[Cal Newport]

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[Cal Newport]

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[Cal Newport]

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